


Re: Blonde Joke

by lazulisong



Series: re: re: re: re: blond joke [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics), Hawkguy - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, blond jokes, kate bishop is better than you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-10-22
Packaged: 2018-02-22 00:36:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2487962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazulisong/pseuds/lazulisong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A blond and a brunette walk into a bar. It's not the first time it's happened, and it definitely won't be the last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Re: Blonde Joke

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Блондин и брюнет заходят в бар…](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8042923) by [BlueSunrise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueSunrise/pseuds/BlueSunrise)



> Graphic depictions of: violence, panic attacks, PTSD, recovery, suicidal thinking, sad Bucky and Steve being sad, disordered eating although no actual bulimia or anorexia nervosa, foul language. Let me put it this way: There was a running joke that the only thing I _wouldn't_ have to warn for was sexual content and .... the only thing I don't have to warn for is sexual content.

* * *

A blond and a brunette walk into a bar.

* * *

This is how you come back to him: 

He's lying in the rubble of the base you destroyed. His head is bleeding. You've dragged him awkwardly over your lap to cushion his head because you can't leave him on the bank again. You remember doing it once and you remember the screaming wrongness of it. Your right hand is buried in his filthy blond hair and you've got a gun in your left hand. If you have to, you have enough bullets to take out a squad of HYDRA soldiers and have two left over. You won't leave him again. You can't.

You hear the sound of wings and you tilt your head up to watch the man with the wings as he lands near you. He starts to rush toward you, talking into a comm, and you lift the gun and point it at his head. He doesn't stop, exactly, but he slows down, like you're a mad dog that might bite or cringe in submission. 

You are. But you can't strike out lest you hurt the man lying so still on your lap. You keep the gun steady.

"Hey," says the man with the wings, in a quiet, friendly voice. You remember sometimes the handlers would try to do this, and you remember that it never worked. For some reason the man with the wings is better at it. "Hey, mind if I sit for a minute?"

You lift one shoulder and lower it. The man on your lap doesn't stir, even when you shift him closer.

The man with the wings sits down across from you with his legs folded, just out of easy striking range. "I'm going to unholster my guns," he says conversationally. "I'm going to put them on the ground. I don't want to put them out of reach, because fuck knows what might happen. But I'll put them as far away as I can. Is that all right?"

You shrug again. You both know you can kill the man with the wings before he can reach the guns, no matter what he tries. 

"Steve still breathing?" says the man with the wings.

"He's alive," you say. You have not talked to another human for two months, maybe three now. Sometimes you talk to animals. A dog came up to you once and put its head on your knee as you sat hunched up on a bench, looking at you with steady, forgiving eyes. You reached out and touched the warm curve of its head, the firmness of the skull over the softness of the fur and skin, and if you had known how to weep, you would have tried.

"That's good," says the man with the wings. He pulls his guns from the holsters and sets them down, just like he told you. "He bleeding anywhere bad?"

"I don't know," you say.

"Can I come over there and check? I'm a paramedic. Or I was," says the man with the wings. "Do you know what a paramedic is? Sorry, man, I get used to talking to Steve and he's had time to get used to this shit. I used to be pararescue. We'd fly in and get wounded soldiers out, you know, in combat. Me and my partner Riley."

"A medic," you say.

"Yeah, kind of," says the man with the wings. "Only like the guy who gets to you before the medic does, you know?" 

You remember medics, you think. You remember being repaired. You have a dim memory before that, where your knowledge of the man on your lap lives, of kind, brusque hands binding up your wounds. "His head is bleeding," you say.

"Aw, Steve," says the man with the wings. "I'm gonna reach into my pants pocket, okay? And I'm gonna pull out some wipes. I'm gonna push them toward you so you can wipe the blood off his head. Is that all right?"

You think about it for a long minute. You can still kill the man with the wings if you have to, and the man on your lap is bleeding, which is not acceptable. You nod once. He reaches slowly into his pants' cargo pocket and pulls out a small package, which he holds up for you to see. He opens it before he pushes it over with a flick of his wrist. You lean over awkwardly and grab it with your right hand. It's a package that says CLEANSING WIPES - HYPOALLERGENIC - UNSCENTED. It doesn't seem to have any hidden explosives in it, but you know better than to trust it completely. You don't think the man with the wings would set off an explosive with the man on the bridge lying on your lap, though.

"Might work better if you put that gun down," says the man with the wings conversationally. "But if you don't want to, that's fine. Hey, do you mind if I answer my comm while you're cleaning Steve's thick skull? They're gonna come down here with guns blazing if I don't answer it pretty quick. I'll put it on speaker."

"Fine," you say, but don't put the gun down. It's a good thing you're leaning against a wall, because it's hard to clean the man on your lap's head and keep the gun steady on the man with the wings at the same time. You manage it, though, and keep a wary eye on the man with the wings as he pulls out a black card from his vest pocket and puts it on the ground. 

He touches a button and a hologram of the woman called Natasha Romanov appears. "--lcon, come in," she says. "God damn it, Wilson, where are you?"

"I'm here, Nat," says the man with the wings. 

"Did you find Cap?" she demands. "Do you need help?"

"Found him," says the man with the wings, watching as you awkwardly dab the wipe over the man in your lap's head. "I'm … gonna need to get back to you on the help thing, though."

"What's wrong?" says the woman called Natasha Romanov. 

"I've got eyes on Steve and he's a hell of a lot safer than I am right now," says the man with the wings. "Look, I need you guys to give me some time."

"What?" says the woman called Natasha Romanov. "I'm coming down there now with Stark. Hold your --"

"No!" says the man with the wings. You flinch without meaning to. He takes a deep breath and says more calmly, "Steve's safe. Barnes is here. He's protecting him, but he's kind of freaked out right now, so if you guys don't mind I'm gonna stop being the Falcon for a while and do my actual job as a VA guy, okay?"

"This is nothing like being a VA guy," she snaps. "Sam --"

"It's okay," he says. "I've done this before. Maybe not on this scale, but this isn't the first time I've done this. I gotta go, Nat. I'll check in in about fifteen minutes if I can."

"Sam --" she starts again, but the man with the wings presses another button and the hologram winks out. 

The man with the wings leans back, relaxed and open. You watch him warily as best you can while you finish cleaning the man from the bridge's bloody head. He looks better without the dried and clotted blood on his face and hair. 

"Feeling better?" says the man with the wings. 

You're not, really. The headache you've had ever since you dragged the man out of the bridge out of the water is worse than usual. It feels like a rifle kicking back against your skull every time your heart beats. The man from the bridge is still unconscious. You want him to wake up. You want him to look at you with his steady clear eyes and tell you what is wrong with you. You want him to fix you. He can't, though, you know this deep in your bones and in your shattered mind, but you want him to try. You want him to walk a little ahead of you so you can follow after. 

You don't understand. You don't understand it at all.

"My name's Sam, by the way," says the man with the wings. "Sam Wilson. I don't think I introduced myself the last time we met."

"You weren't a target," you say. Your voice is still rough. "You were an obstacle."

"That's harsh, man," says the man with the wings, whose name is Sam Wilson. "What's your name, anyway? That one says it's Bucky but there's no way even a white kid got named Bucky for real."

You look down at the man from the bridge again. It seems to you that his color looks a little better. "James. James Buchanan Barnes. I saw it. At the museum."

The man named Sam Wilson nods. "I saw it too," he says. "Hell of a thing, right? Your whole life on display."

You don't say anything.

The man named Sam Wilson unfolds his legs and stretches them out. "Don't want to call you Bucky," he said meditatively. "That's Steve's, you know? You're not the Soldier any more. Can't call you Sarge. You like James okay?"

"No," you say.

"Jim? Jimmy? Jem?"

You look at him in something like wonder. 

"Call you Barnes for now, I guess," says the man named Sam Wilson. "Or hey, I could call you JB. Sound good?"

For an answer you lift your left hand and shoot. The man named Sam Wilson flinches back in surprise, but the HYDRA agent about to attack him crumbles into a dead heap at the entrance.

"So was that a yes or a no?" says the man named Sam Wilson. "I'm getting some serious mixed signals here, no lie."

"I don't have a name now," you say. "Call me whatever you like."

"Oh, boy," sighs the man named Sam Wilson, but he's smiling at you. "You want to get out of here? You'll have to carry him, he's too damn heavy for mere mortals like me."

You consider this. The man on the bridge is looking better by the minute but even if he heals and wakes up soon, there could be more HYDRA agents coming. You could leave after you got him to safety, you tell yourself. Even as you think it you know you are lying to yourself. You can't leave the man on the bridge again. 

But you can't stay here, either, and the man named Sam Wilson came after the man on the bridge, took care of him, sat down with you, and talked in a friendly way. "I'll kill you if you hurt him or attack me," you say finally.

"Yeah," says the man named Sam Wilson. "I figured."

You stand up, lifting the man on the bridge as you rise. He's heavy but you don't care. You've lifted heavier loads and there's an instinct that you can no longer deny telling you to keep him close, to carry him to safety. To bring him home.

You follow the man named Sam Wilson out of the rubble and into the world above.

* * *

You wake up from a heavy sleep, filled with fragments of memories, not quite nightmares. Your phone is blinking, which means there's a message. The man named Steve, who was Bucky Barnes' best friend, is on a mission with the other Avengers, and he's probably in Tokyo fighting a monster right now. So it's not him. You fumble for the phone and swipe the pattern that tells the phone it belongs to you clumsily, your flesh fingers still stiff with sleep. 

You have one new text message. It's from a girl. It says, _Get your ass down to the pizza joint, I'm hungry._

It's been fifteen minutes since the message arrived. You fell asleep again without meaning to. It's probably because the man named Steve isn't here: you don't like being awake without him around, for some reason. You text back, _ETA 30min_.

As you're heading out the door with your jacket over one shoulder, wriggling a glove over your metal arm, you get another text. This one says, _I'll be home soon, Buck._

You look in the mirror and are surprised to see that you're almost smiling.

The girl's name is Kate but you mess up and call her Becca all the time. Becca was your sister. Kate doesn't look like her, exactly, but she bosses you around the same way Becca did, from the moment your ma put a tiny warm bundle in your arms and told you that was your new sister, until the moment she died and you crept away and hid, your heart a heavy weight in your chest. Steve found you and wrapped you in his skinny arms and you cried yourself out. 

The girl named Kate doesn't seem to mind being called Becca. She calls you Barnes, or Hey You, or sometimes Asshole. She teaches you blond jokes in front of the man named Steve and she brings the man named Clint Barton's dog to your apartment and lets you let him get up on the couch while the man named Clint Barton yells because she's teaching the dog bad habits and the man named Steve tries not to flinch at the dog hair on the couch. 

You get along pretty well. 

You're eating pizza -- plain cheese, because your stomach twisted at the sight of the pepperoni and sausage -- with the girl when it occurs to you: "Did we ever tell Steve we were going to marry him?"

The girl tilts down her sunglasses and looks at you with raised eyebrows. "If you want to marry Captain America, that's your own business. Leave me out of it." She takes a dainty bite of her pizza. "Unless I'm your sister again, in which case, what the fuck, Barnes. What the _actual fuck_."

"Sorry," you say, looking down. You got confused again, but you remember that the girl isn't Becca now. Her name is Kate Bishop. She and Clint Barton are both codenamed Hawkeye, which they appear to think is perfectly normal, and everybody else finds a little strange. 

The girl stares at you for a long moment. She says, "Captain America acts like it was HYDRA that screwed you up, but you were kind of fucked up to begin with, weren't you?"

You look up, twist your mouth into something like an expression. You hold your left hand up, pinch your forefinger and thumb about half an inch apart. Maybe a little. 

You and your sister probably didn't tell Steve you were going to marry him, come to think of it. It just seemed logical and right, that Becca would marry Steve and you would find someone else to marry, and you'd live in the same apartment or down the hall from each other. Steve would be an artist, and Becca would be a nurse, and you would do something that earned lots of money so Steve could always have good art supplies and the medicines he needed. Maybe even be able to go into the country during the summer, when the air was too hot and he couldn't breathe in the city. Steve and Becca would have at least three kids and the oldest boy would be called Jimmy. 

Looking back, it seems to you that the part where you got married was the weakest part of the plan. You knew you had to get married. You couldn't just live with Steve and Becca until you all got old and died. But when you tried to imagine the girl you would marry, it never quite worked.

"You could marry him now," says the girl. 

You shrug and let your mouth twist up. "You think he's dumb enough to put up with this?" you say.

"I think --" the girl begins, and then her phone rings. "Hold on," she says, and then, "What now." 

You're not quite sure what you think about cell phones yet but you're pretty fascinated by them. The man named Tony Stark gave you a bunch of little black stickers to put on your metal fingers so you can control your phone with your left hand. He tried to explain how they worked but you didn't pay attention after a while. 

"Are you kidding me," says the girl. "Why can't you just -- oh my god, no, shut up, I'm not feeding your dog while you -- they're letting you make a phone call, Barton, why can't you -- Ugh! You're such an idiot!" She hits the end button so hard she has to shake her finger out. That's the one advantage that the new phones have over the old. Besides music. And internet. And the little programs that tell you when to take your pills and when to go to your therapy appointments. And the little program where you can type what you want the man named Steve to get at the store and send it to his phone, so he comes back home with avocadoes and strawberry guava juice and ice cream with chocolate-covered almonds in it. But definitely the part where angry girls can't shriek "You're such an idiot, Bucky Barnes!" and slam the receiver down so hard your ears ring for ten minutes is pretty good.

The girl is shoving things into her large purple handbag and muttering under her breath. She looks up. "Do you want to come help me rescue Hawkeye?" she says, unexpectedly.

You're not supposed to be in combat situations. Your therapists and the man named Steve are very clear about this. But you're bored. The man named Steve and the man named Sam Wilson are on a mission, and you and the man named Tony Stark aren't allowed around each other without adult supervision. The most exciting thing that's happened this week was two days ago when the lady named Miss Potts paid you in chocolate to lounge like a panther in a corner of her office while she talked to men who tried to call her honey and you stared at them through half-lidded eyes. You made them very nervous. You had enjoyed it nearly as much as you enjoyed the chocolate afterward. 

"I don't have a weapon," you say. 

"Please," she says, "you've got a giant metal fuck-off arm and you hate everything. What other weapons do you need?"

You think about it for a minute and realize that she's right. You stand up and follow her to her tiny purple car, and fold yourself, with some difficulty, into the passenger seat. The girl named Kate is a good driver, you think, but you're not sure. She cuts off a taxi and responds to the blaring horn she gets in return with her middle finger stuck out the window. "Kiss my ass," she shrieks out the window. "This is New Fucking York, dipshit! Learn to fucking drive!"

You don't remember girls her age swearing like that before, at least around you. It's kind of nice. The girl named Kate has a pretty voice when she's screaming invective at the drivers honking at her.

You settle your legs as comfortably as possible in the tiny space and close your eyes for a catnap.

* * *

A blond and a brunette walk into a bar. They --

* * *

The man named Clint Barton, codenamed Hawkeye, is being held in a basement by a bunch of fat Russian men in maroon tracksuits. They call you and the girl 'bro', and they say they're going to make the man named Clint Barton pay for something that he's done to them. You don't particularly care about the details. You're irritated that they're calling you bro and they're not being polite to the girl named Kate.

The girl named Kate is also not very impressed at the men in the maroon tracksuits, or at the man named Clint Barton, who has been taped to a chair bolted to the concrete of the ground. He has a head wound, of course. You are beginning to learn that if the man named Clint Barton can possibly sustain a head wound, he will do it. You look around thoughtfully and interrupt one of the men in the maroon tracksuit talking about how he's going to make you pay, bro, make you pay for all you've done to him and his bros, by ripping a length of lead pipe from the plumbing of the basement. 

"Bro," says one of the men in the maroon tracksuits. " _Bro._ "

"You're boring me," you say, in the perfect Moscow dialect that your first keepers burnt into you. 

" _Bro,_ " says the man in the maroon tracksuit. 

The one threatening the man named Clint Barton turns around slowly, cocking his gun. You look from his gun to the girl named Kate, and tap the lead pipe thoughtfully against the leather palm guard of your left hand. The impact makes a soft, muffled sound with a low, off-key resonance from the pipe.

"You're very rude," you tell him gravely.

When the first man in the maroon tracksuit rushes you, you sidestep him neatly and hit the one coming behind him hard enough that he reels back into the chest of the third. The girl named Kate has put two arrows into the first man in the maroon tracksuit's feet, and the man named Clint Barton heaves his body up with an effort and breaks the rusted screws holding the chair to the ground. He rolls into the leader of the men in the maroon tracksuits, and the leader stumbles, taking a step that leads him into the scrum of fists and cursing that centers around you. You catch hold of the leader's thinning hair and pull him close to you with the lead pipe pressing against his throat. 

The room falls dead silent except for the muffled curses as the man named Clint Barton tries to get himself upright, like a capsized turtle, and fails. The girl named Kate turns and aims three arrows at the leader of the men in maroon tracksuits' head.

"Say you're sorry for being rude in front of the lady," you advise them.

There's no response, so you squeeze the leader's neck tighter against the lead pipe. "Say it!"

"You're crazy, bro," gasps the leader of the men in maroon tracksuits. "You're fucking crazy!"

You squeeze more. "That's not the answer I'm looking for," you tell him.

"S-Sorry," he gasps. "Sorry, lady! Sorry!" You squeeze again just hard enough that he loses consciousness and slumps onto the floor when you let him go. 

The girl named Kate cocks her head. "Do you think that when you defeat their leader you become the new boss?"

"God forbid," you say. "Gimme some zip ties."

When you and the girl named Kate climb up out of the basement, you leave behind the men in the maroon tracksuits, and carry the man named Clint Barton with you. He's not very conscious, but he's trying. When you come out of the dark and out onto the street, you are greeted by the man named Steve Rogers and his friend Sam Wilson, codenamed Falcon. The man named Steve Rogers is still in his uniform and has his arms folded across his chest. 

"Aw, man," says the girl named Kate. 

"Jesus Christ, what did they do to him?" says the man named Sam Wilson.

You shrug the shoulder not holding the man named Clint Barton up. "Stuff," you say.

"They busted my hearing aids," says the man named Clint Barton. His voice is a little too loud. "And Katie-Kate wouldn't promise to feed the dog."

The man named Steve rolls his eyes.

The woman called Natasha Romanoff, code named Black Widow, appears with a bodega bag and pulls out a big bag of almond M&Ms for you. 

The man named Steve rubs his forehead. "Nat," he says.

"It's what Pepper gives him," she argues. This is true. The lady named Miss Potts tried several types of candy to pay you to stand behind her and look menacing, and the ones you like best are almond M&Ms. They taste a little like the candy you dimly remember from the war, and you like almonds.

You offer the man named Steve the bag, but he shakes his head. The man named Steve hardly ever takes your candy, which confuses you a little bit. You keep offering it to him, though. 

"Pepper also gives him Armani suits and lets him pick the music in the car on the way to their meetings," says the man named Sam Wilson. 

It's true, she does. You like the music you hear in your good dreams; the type that played in a small room where you stumbled over furniture and pulled a small blond man with you, laughing and trying to push you away. You like the rock music too, the type that sounds like what's in your head all the time. The lady named Miss Potts tries to get you to listen to more classical music, but it reminds you of being in the residential therapy place. Sometimes she lets you play her piano while you're waiting for a meeting to start. You like that.

You have suits in grey and dark blue that make you look a little like a mafia goon and more like the lady named Miss Potts supports you in a style you've been trying to become accustomed to. The fit of the trousers is very narrow. She also bought you a proper suit that doesn't fit like it's trying to strain over your muscles, one that you could wear to Mass if you were still the type of person that went to Mass. The man named Steve says that people don't wear suits to church any more, and in proof always goes in nice slacks and a buttoned-down shirt and polished leather shoes. You haven't been yet, but your therapist says it's a goal you can work toward.

Some days it seems like you have nothing but goals to work toward. 

"That's not the point," says the man named Steve. 

"The point is," says the man named Clint Barton, who has had his spare hearing aids delivered with a smack on the back of the head by the girl named Kate, "if she doesn't give him something, she'll feel like she owes him a favor. Do you really want Tasha to think she owes Barnes a favor?"

The man named Steve turns a little pale. 

You keep the bag of M&Ms, and you even get the man named Steve to eat a few.

* * *

A blond and a brunette are walking on a beach, Coney Island maybe, you can't remember. The blond finds a bottle washed up, and pulls the cork out. A genie appears, says, "You've released me so I have to offer each of you a wish." 

The blond says, "I wish I was big and strong." Poof! The blond gets his wish.

"What do you wish for?" says the genie to the brunette, and you try to scream a warning but there's the red thing coming for the blond with the tendrils wrapping around you while he looks out to the still clear horizon. It's going to get him. You struggle against it and it pushes cold against you, except for your left arm, which is burning with pain, and you look down and it's nothing but blood and mangled meat. You open your mouth and try to scream again but nothing comes out. You're afraid to try again. If you scream they'll put you back in. You try to reach the man with blond hair to warn him, but you see yourself raise a rifle and aim. You can't stop it. You can't stop it.

A hand reaches out to you and grips your right shoulder. "Bucky!" You're not Bucky, you are ice and you cannot --

"Bucky!" says the man named Steve. "Buck, come on, wake up, it's just a dream, you're safe." 

You jerk awake and barely stop yourself from lashing out with the knife from under your pillow. You're not supposed to have one, but the woman called Natasha Romanoff gives them to you sometimes. She thinks it's safer than you making them yourself. The man named Steve is standing just out of your range. You blink at him, still half-seeing the man with the glasses and the man whose face was blood red behind him, but you realize now that you are in the apartment you share with him, the man named Steve. 

"I'm going to turn the light on," says the man named Steve. He backs up to by the doorway and twists the knob that controls the light so it's half on, not so dim that you can't see clearly, but not so bright you flinch from it, either. He stays there while you look around the room. You stink of cold fear sweat. You don't see anything wrong, though. 

The man named Tony Stark knew what he was doing when he planned the room, or at least hired someone who did. Your bed is set on a solid, short, and massive block of wood without room for so much as an ant to slide under it, and the room has no closet for anybody to hide in. Your wardrobe is too heavy for a normal human to move easily, but easy enough for you to put in front of the door and buy yourself a little time. There's two mirrors on the walls that make it so you can see everything in the room, even behind yourself, and Stark himself showed you that they could be taken off the walls. 

The woman called Natasha Romanoff taught you how to check if a mirror was real or a two-way one, and the man named Sam Wilson goes with you every week or so to buy new ones and switch them out.

There's even a hidden panic room, where the air system is separate and locks to biometric readings. it's barely large enough to let you sit down, but you can keep a few knives and rations in it, and the sketchbook you stole from the man named Steve and the dog tags the military made for you again. 

"You with me, Buck?" says the man named Steve quietly. He's careful not to block the exit or look at you directly. A small part of you hates that he has to be so cautious. Another part wishes tiredly he'd just put you down when he'd had the chance. 

You want to tell him no, you're not with him, but you are learning again how to not be cruel, how not to lash out. "It was a bad dream, that's all," you say, looking away from him. 

The man named Steve is silent. You don't want to look up at him, in case he's pitying you or feeling guilty again. But you do anyway. His face is carefully blank, which is almost worse. He opens his mouth, and then closes it again, and finally he says, "You want some cocoa?"

"Sure," you say. 

"I'll be out in the kitchen," he says, turns his back to you, and walks out. The trust he still has in you makes you want to throw a knife at him. Maybe not hit him, just close enough to remind him that you're dangerous, will always be dangerous, and he's too important to be careless about it. Then you drive your metal fist into the solid wood of the bedframe and make another dent in it, and get up to shower and change. 

The man named Steve is at the stove when you come out to the kitchen with your hair wet and pulled back in a bun, bundled up in a hooded sweatshirt and long sleeved undershirt and sweatpants and thick wool socks on your feet. It's almost summer, but you're still cold. You're always cold now. He's stirring the paste of the cocoa and sugar and milk together in the pan. You want to come up behind him and lean your head on his shoulder, breathe in his scent, the warmth of his skin. 

The smell of the cocoa brings up a sense-memory of standing at a stove, bracketing a smaller figure with your arms as he stirs the cocoa in a battered tin pot over an alcohol stove, teasing him about something, keeping your touch light and friendly. You wanted to gather him up closer, nuzzle in behind his ear and breathe him in deep, but you knew you couldn't. You can't remember why exactly now, but the sense of frustrated desire seems to billow up with the steam from the cocoa on the stove.

You keep your distance. 

He pours the cocoa out carefully from the pot to two mugs -- his has a painting from the Met on it, one you can't remember but know you've seen before. Yours has a pouting cartoon bear, colored blue and with a raincloud with tiny hearts for raindrops on its white belly. It says I'M ALWAYS GRUMPY IN THE MORNINGS on the other side. Miss Potts had given it to you full of chocolate candies and you don't quite dare get rid of it. 

Besides, you kind of like it. It's nothing like what Bucky Barnes would have had back before everything, and it is empathetically like nothing the Winter Soldier would have seen or used or even known about.

The man named Steve tilts his head toward the living room, and you follow him silently to the long, low couch in the center of the room. The man named Steve pulls one of the fuzzy blankets from the top of it and waits for you to curl up before he drops it on your lap.

You arrange yourself so the blanket is covering you, almost like a shroud, and the man named Steve reaches over to the glass table and turns on the large TV screen. Neither of you are much into television, but he turns it to a classical music station that plays softly as you drink your cocoa. After a while you let the warmth of the mug and the taste of the cocoa and his solid, steady presence at the other end of the couch relax you enough that you're not quite aware when you fall asleep.

You wake up to the man named Steve saying your name quietly and blink a few times before his face really focuses. "It's almost time for your therapy," he says apologetically. "Come on, I'll drive you there."

Your neck is still stiff from sleeping curled on the couch, but you feel pretty rested anyway. You feel better enough today that you know that you're hungry instead of just feeling miserable. Nothing sounds really good, so you go to the kitchen and get the milk the man named Steve buys for you out of the fridge. The man named Steve is tapping at his phone, sitting at the kitchen table with a small plate with toast crumbs in front of him. It looks like he just had one piece of toast. You frown, looking at him.

"Hey, Buck," says the man named Steve. He sounds tired even though you know he can get along with even less sleep than you can. "I went to the store this morning and got the strawberry-guava juice. It's in the freezer."

"Thank you," you say. You don't go for the freezer, though. You pull out another glass -- a pint glass that says A Good Time For A Guinness! with the toucan balancing another pint glass full of dark beer on it, and fill it with milk, consider it for a second, and then get one of the little bottles of Ensure, which is a nutrition drink. The man named Steve drinks them when he has to, but you think they remind him of Ovaltine and hospitals too much to really make him happy to drink them. They're useful, though, because both of your metabolisms are so quick that you have to eat a lot every day, and your own system is fussy about what food it will accept or not. You can usually drink the Ensure and milk, however, and the man named Bruce Banner, who is the Hulk, says it should keep you running at least. 

When you turn around, he's at the kitchen table with his head buried in his folded arms on the table and his phone buzzing angrily beside him on the table. You study him carefully but even though he's folded up and hiding from the world he doesn't seem sad, just frustrated. 

You put the milk and the Ensure next to him and try to ruffle his hair in the same way that Bucky Barnes would have done. You don't think it was very successful, but the man named Steve lifts his head up a little and his mouth quirks in a tiny smile at the sight of the milk and Ensure drink. "Aw, thanks, Bucky," he says.

You linger long enough to watch him drink most of the milk and start on the Ensure drink before you go to the bathroom to get ready.

You wash your face and brush your hair into a neater ponytail, and then you go to get dressed in real-person clothes. You hesitate for a minute in front of your wardrobe. If you ask the man named Steve he'll help you pick out your shirt or your pants or something, but you asked him to help two days ago and your therapist says you have to do your best to be independent. It's okay to ask for help if you need it, but you have to try first.

The man named Steve would help right away, you know, but sometimes his mouth goes all sorrowful and tight, and you think it would be worse to see that than struggle through choosing today. 

You don't have many clothes to choose between, anyway. You have more than you did, but they're all in the same style and the colors all match, so on your bad days when you're still too proud to ask for help you can get a pair of pants and a shirt and it won't look like you just reached blindly into the wardrobe.

You decide on jeans and a cadet-blue henley shirt, soft and comfortable. Then you realize that the man named Tony Stark has left you another t-shirt with a black pattern on a dark navy background, and you put that one on too. You look in the mirror, and you think you look pretty normal. You could wear sneakers to complete the illusion but you still feel better in combat boots. You slide a knife in your left boot -- a ceramic one, so the therapy office's metal detectors won't beep -- and put on the bracelet that the woman called Natasha Romanoff gave you. If you pull at it just right it becomes a strong length of cord long enough to strangle someone with or at least tie them up after you knock them unconscious. There's a silicone glove, too, that the man named Tony Stark made for you, that makes your metal hand look like a really fancy prosthetic limb instead of a deadly weapon. You're not sure what you think about it, but it makes people stare at you less, at least, so you put up with it.

When you come out again you see the man named Steve's hooded sweatshirt on the back of the couch, and the man named Steve sliding his phone into his jacket pocket. You pick up the sweatshirt and look at him sideways. He doesn't say anything, so you pull it on and lift the hood up. The jersey is soft and warm and it smells like the special detergent the man named Steve likes and a little like his aftershave. 

He picks up his keys and you follow him out. He's not really supposed to take you places on his motorcycle, because the man named Phillip Coulson, who was dead and now is not, is afraid that you'll take control of the bike and plow it into the traffic meridian, or the river, or maybe just into a train, and let it explode into fire and pain. The man named Steve doesn't give a damn what the man named Phillip Coulson, who was dead, thinks about you and motorcycles, and you like them better than cars. He offers the keys to you, but you shake your head and climb up behind him. 

The man named Steve is solid as a wall when your arms are around him; like a rock you could hold on to as everything fell apart around you. You don't remember much of the very early days, just after you came back to him, but you remember him being there, holding on tight like he was afraid he'd let you fall again.

Now, though, it's nice to lean carefully into his bulk, link your arms around his waist and hang on as he takes the curves of the road with expert grace. You're a little sorry when you reach your therapist's office and you have to swing off the bike and go inside. You glance back as you begin to climb the stairs to her office. The man named Steve is a large man, a broad man, steady as an oak, but as he watches you go into the office he looks strangely small and defeated.

* * *

Your therapist asks if you've heard any new jokes lately, so you tell her one. 

A blond and a brunette walk into a bar. They get settled, order their drinks, and then they notice that people keep walking into a back room. About half of them return looking really happy and half of them just don't come back at all. Finally they can't stand it any more and they ask the bartender what's going on.

The bartender says, In that room is a mirror that will give you what you want most in the world if you tell it the truth. If you tell it a lie -- _poof!_ you disappear.

Well, the blond can't be stopped from investigating, so he and the brunette go into the room and the blond stands in front of the mirror and says, I got this black eye defending Artie from a bunch of assholes who had no reason to be hassling him like that.

 _Poof!_ you say, flinging your hands out. He goes from being a ninety pound weakling to weighing 220 pounds, all muscle, goes from five foot four to six foot five, built like a brick shithouse and handsome as a movie star to boot. 

Wow, says the blond, Are you going to do it too?

The brunette says, No.

Why not? says the blond.

I don't know what I'd want it to give me, the brunette says, and _POOF!_.

You stop talking. 

Your therapist waits for a couple of minutes and then she says, "Is that the end of the joke?" 

You shrug.

"Maybe you can make one up, and tell me later," she says kindly. 

"Maybe," you say. 

She drops the subject and pulls out the art supplies. Your verbal skills still aren't the best after your brain rewired itself and some days she just sits and draws with you for a while. It's not like coloring, not like a kid. You draw guns and the stumps of trees and sometimes a small man in an oversized jacket, walking far in front of you. She draws flowers and birds, mostly; sometimes she draws houses. She doesn't expect you to talk as long as you're concentrating on the pictures. 

You come out of the office to find the man named Steve hunched in a chair in the waiting room, his long limbs folded up like he's trying to take up less space. He's pretending to flip through a magazine that offers to tell the reader how to make great healthy snacks their kids will love!!, very badly.

You remember: another office, another century. Steve Rogers' feet weren't quite long enough to reach the ground as he sat in the chair, and he held them very still. His mouth was set in a white, stubborn line.

Bucky Barnes had come straight from work to fetch his friend Steve Rogers. He'd spent an hour coaxing, cajoling, nagging to get Steve Rogers to let him do it. It won't be any bother, pal, we can go get burgers after when he tells you how well you're getting. 

Bucky Barnes knew that the news would not be good.

In the office, Bucky Barnes looked at Steve Rogers and said nothing, even when the doctor asked if he could come into the office. The doctor knew that Bucky Barnes took care of Steve Rogers, that they were like brothers. Steve Rogers needed rest and good food and sweet country air, none of which Steve Rogers could afford and which Bucky Barnes would have to scrabble to provide. Bucky Barnes thanked the doctor quietly and went back out to Steve Rogers.

Steve Rogers looks up at Bucky Barnes and the stubborn line between his eyes deepened. Bucky Barnes doesn't sigh or look at him in pity. C'mon, Steve, he said instead. Let's get a burger.

Bucky Barnes took Steve Rogers out for a burger at a place stinking of grease and the homeless men that huddled in the far booths, stretching out the time in the light and warmth that they won with their nickel's worth of coffee. He told Steve Rogers funny stories about the customers at the store while they ate, and took him to the park to breathe in the slightly cooler, cleaner air. He didn't press a kiss to the dear stubborn line of Steve Rogers' jaw and promise him everything would be all right.

You wonder why not.

"Bucky?" says the man named Steve. He's standing now, his brow creased with worry. "Hey, you okay?"

You focus again. The man named Steve is standing close to you, but not too close. The lady at the reception desk is attending to her work and ignoring you in a way that suggests she's tracking you very closely indeed.

"Do you want me to call the doctor?" says the man named Steve. 

You shake your head. "I," you say, and stop. You lick your lips nervously. This is still hard, even though the doctor and the man named Steve and the man named Sam Wilson all say you are getting better at it every day. "I want to go to the park."

"Ok, Buck," says the man named Steve, and leads you out of the office and down the stairs and to the waiting bike below.

* * *

A blond and a brunette walk into a bar. The blond's mad. The brunette says, "Aw, come on, Stevie --"

You can't remember the punch line.

* * *

Here and now, you and the man named Steve drive to the park, and you lean your cheek against his broad warm shoulder. You can't tell the beating of his heart from the rumble of the motorcycle, but that's all right. When you get to the park there's a crepe stand near where the man named Steve parks the bike. 

You say, "Did we ever have that?"

"In France, a couple times," says the man named Steve. 

"Did I like them?" you say.

"It's a thin pancake with sugar in it," says the man named Steve, rather dryly. "And custard." He looks over at the stand. "And I guess avocadoes and spinach and cheese instead now, if you want one," he adds. "You ate more than I did when we had them in France."

"Oh," you say. The man named Steve heads over to the stand and you follow after him. He orders two Chantilly crepes with strawberries, and you watch the lady give him his change, carefully, in case she doesn't give him enough. It doesn't matter, because he puts most of it in the tip jar anyway. You watch her pour the batter onto the metal pan thing and chatter softly with the man named Steve as she slices up the strawberries and gets the cream and custard out. She lifts the edge of the pancake up with the long, thin spatula, and flips it over so the other side can cook. When it's done she spreads it with the custard and strawberries and shakes a thick white dusting of sugar over it, folds it up into a wedge, and slides it into a piece of paper. 

She hands it to the man named Steve, and he tries to give it to you, but you take an instinctive step back. It's not that you think she's poisoned it, not really, but the man named Steve has to eat first. It's one of the things you woke up knowing. 

"Buck," he says, frowning at you. 

You set your jaw stubbornly, but don't answer. He sighs and takes a bite of the crepe while she starts making the second one.

He takes the second one from her when it's finished and wishes her a pleasant day. You don't say anything to her. 

You follow him to the bench nearby and sit down when he does. His gold hair is shining in the afternoon light. It blinds you. You look away and take a careful bite of your crepe instead. It's good, but very sweet, so you eat it slowly, letting the cream melt in your mouth and tasting the sweet, tart berries with as much focus as you can.

It's good, you think, it's pretty good. The man named Steve is sitting next to you eating his own crepe. The sun is warm on your face. A lady goes by, pushing a stroller. You watch her out of the corner of her eye and you wish you were a person who could ask to see the baby. 

You remember liking babies, the way they smelled all fuzzy and sweet-sour, the way they pushed their hands at your face, the way they looked at you with bright interest. You remember feeling protective and tender toward them. You remember the weight of a baby sleeping in your arms at church. You were good at babies. 

The lady turns out of sight, and you eat another bite of your crepe before you say something and make the man named Steve sad again.

You don't want to look at him, even sideways, because you're afraid he'll see how much you wanted to see the baby. He might run after the lady and ask her, and worse, she might let you look at it, or maybe even touch its little hands or cheek. You focus on the statue in the center of the grassy area instead. 

Bucky Barnes had never quite dared venture to Park Slope back then: it was for rich people, real swells, and not for him, and not for Steve. He hadn't resented it for himself, not really, but he deeply resented it for Steve. Steve should be there in one of those beautiful buildings, surrounded by beautiful things. Bucky Barnes had been to Prospect Park. His father had dressed in his uniform from the Great War and Bucky Barnes had been dressed in his stiffest best clothes. They had stood in a tiresome line while a man made a speech, and Bucky Barnes had been nudged forward to pull the sheet off the statue. 

The statue that you're looking at now. 

Your hand snaps up into the air before you consciously realize what's happening, and the dart meant for the man named Steve sinks deep into the palm of your right hand. Your crepe falls on the concrete of the bench and splatters all over. You hear another _fwip_ of another dart and feel the stab of a dart at your neck.

"Steve," you say.

The man named Steve looks at you in horror, even as you lurch over to pull off the dart that has blossomed on his neck. Some instinct keeps you moving, rolling him off the bench and lying over him in a muddled attempt to protect him. 

"Bu--" says the man named Steve, before your eyes dim over and you sink into a stupor.

You hear footsteps, then feel rough hands rolling you off the man named Steve. You can't move. You can't rip off their arms or legs, you can't break their ribs or hips, you can't even bite them like a wild animal as they pick up the dead-weight bulk of the man named Steve. You can't even snarl at them.

"Sorry about interrupting your date, Captain," says one of them. 

"Shut up, let's get the other one out of the open before someone notices him," says another. The rough hands grab you by your boots and drag you across the concrete and the grass to the cover of the bushes surrounding the park. You wonder what they did to the crepe stand lady, in a dull, distant way. "Give him another dose."

"You want to waste it? He's not gonna wake up from this."

"You want to take that chance? Who the hell knows what sort of guy Rogers likes to fuck. This one's pretty built."

The prick of the needle and the feel of cold fluid sliding into your vein is familiar. 

"Come on," says the first voice. The footsteps move away.

They've left you for dead. 

They've left you for dead but you are not going to die.

You are not going to fucking die.

* * *

It takes your body a while to clear the drugs out of your system. The first hour you lie, semi-conscious and dazed, and the second you spike a fever that would boil the brains of anybody without the serum and you vomit until there is nothing but bile left in your stomach. You don't fight it. It would have been quicker but they gave you a fatal dose for a man in your size and condition. It's clear they hadn't seen past the silicone glove on your arm. You're viciously grateful for that. They could have had Captain America and the Winter Soldier if they hadn't been so fucking stupid. 

By the end of the second hour you're able to push yourself away from the pool of your own vomit and sit up slowly. The park is darkening into twilight, and you have to get moving before the night falls completely. 

But where to go?

They must have been watching the brownstone. You wonder what they thought you were to the man named Steve. A lover? A charity case? 

Stark Tower is more secure, with the AI named JARVIS and the man named Tony Stark and the lady named Pepper Potts. It's further away, though, and you think you can drive the motorcycle to the brownstone but you're not sure you can make it to midtown. 

Your pocket buzzes again, and you realize that you're not shaking, your phone is going off. It takes an effort to get your phone out and swipe the pattern to tell it who it belongs to. 40 missed text messages, 20 missed calls. 11 missed video call requests. 

You close your eyes, take a deep breath. Then you look through them. JARVIS is responsible for half the text messages. His perimeter had been breached, the man named Tony Stark and the lady named Miss Potts attacked. The lady named Miss Potts had been gassed. The man named Tony Stark has broken ribs and a concussion.

More text messages. The woman called Natasha Romanov has a broken leg. The man named Bruce Banner, who is the Hulk, has retreated to the quarters that are made to stop the Hulk lest something regrettable happens. The man named Sam Wilson is unconscious after a blow to the head. The man named Clint Barton has been taken. Captain Rogers and Sgt Barnes, please report. Captain Rogers and Sgt Barnes, please report. 

"Wake up, phone," you say. Your voice is rough but your phone chirrups, so it's not bad enough to screw up the voice recognition. "Text message Avengers start: Captain Rogers kidnapped. Barnes drugged and left for dead, still recovering. Over." The phone chirrups again and the words appear on the screen.

You have ten text messages from the girl named Kate, all along the lines of _answer your texts god damn it_. You say, "Text message Kate Bishop start: I've been a little fucking tied up. Over."

Your phone chirrups again, and a message from JARVIS appears. _Retreat to secure location._

"Copy that," you say, staggering to your feet. "Over."

* * *

The drive back to the brownstone passes in a blur. The man named Steve has been stubbornly insistent that you carry keys with you no matter what, and he put up with the man named Tony Stark touching his bike only long enough to install a biometric security system. If you don't have the fob and the handlebar doesn't recognize your hand, it locks down. If you have the fob but aren't in the security system's memory, it starts screaming like a banshee. You didn't listen to most of the more gruesome details of how the man named Tony Stark made sure that nobody but Steve and the people he chose could use his bike. You were mostly concerned with the way that the security system was at least twice as expensive as the actual bike. 

Your mind is wandering. You force yourself to focus enough to park the bike and stagger up to the brownstone. The man named Steve let the man named Tony Stark design the security for it, not that it matters if they managed to get through JARVIS long enough to attack the man named Tony Stark, but both you and the man named Steve have other methods of securing a building.

You have to stop on the stoop and take a deep breath. The man named Steve is the one who usually opens the door, but he made sure you knew how to do it, and you've watched him enough that you can mimic him perfectly. 

First: Handprint on the scanner above the doorknob. Second: enter code on electronic pad -- your service number, his service number, the date in 1924 you met, his mother's wedding anniversary. Third: Within ten seconds insert both deadbolt key and door key into tumblers. Four: Turn both door and deadbolt keys simultaneously. Five: Push open door, step inside: speak in a clear voice, or as clear as you can manage it, Bucky Barnes lives in Brooklyn and hates the Dodgers. Six: The door beeps, which means you have another thirty seconds to enter a new code: Peggy Carter's phone number from before the war, the alphabetical part translated into digits. Finally: a green light, and the sound of the electromagnetic locks engaging on the door.

You're as safe as you've ever been here in the future.

You realize after a minute that you are standing perfectly still. Your body feels very far away. That makes sense, because you are waiting for orders. You have returned to base and you are awaiting orders, Commander.

C'mon, Stevie, what now?

There is no answer.

You take a step forward. Your orders where to retreat to a secure location. You have to go to your safe spot and wait for more orders.

You stumble over something that falls with a faint bell-like tone and silences itself almost instantly. You look down as Captain America's shield lands on your foot. 

You recoil, stumbling backward to the other side of the entranceway. There's no place to look that doesn't have the fucking thing in your line of vision. You hate it. You hate it so much. Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, you, their broken mosaic, you all hate it so much it makes you retch just looking at it. This thing took Steve Rogers away from Bucky Barnes. You can't look at it without seeing the man named Steve smiling at you, sweet and a little patiently sad, before his eyes closed and he fell, down, down, down, from the helicarrier tearing itself apart to the dank river below. Behind that is a sense memory: "I am going to die for him". 

You cower like a whipped dog as the hateful thing wobbles once more and settles, face down, on the floor. The only sound in the room is your labored breathing. You can't drag your eyes away from it. If the man named Steve or the man named Sam were here, they would help you. They would move between you and it and give you something else to focus on. The man named Sam would crouch down, low and easy, and say, "Hey, JB, you want to help me with some breathing exercises?" The man named Steve would pick up the horrible thing and move it quietly away.

You can almost hear the man named Sam's calm voice. "Ready, JB? Four count in, seven count hold, eight count out. You got this, man."

If you close your eyes as you breathe, you can almost pretend that the man named Steve is behind you, guarding your back. 

In. Hold. Out.

In. Hold. Out.

Slowly, your heart rate settles. When you open your eyes again, Captain America's shield no longer looks sinister lying there. It looks awkward and almost lonely with the arm straps empty, waiting for someone to slide into them.

_Take up your shield and your armor and come to my aid._

You remember Steve Rogers quoting that to Bucky Barnes. It was from the Psalms, you think, one of the angry ones. You don't remember. All Bucky Barnes knew about the Psalms was that they were written by a guy named David, and Steve Rogers had memorized most of them one winter when he was sicker than usual.

You set your jaw. 

You stomp on the edge of the shield like Steve Rogers had practiced in the war and shoot your right fist out as it flips up. The heavy leather straps fit over your forearm almost perfectly. Then you drop it again, letting it lean against your leg, and pull out your phone.

"We're going to get them back," you say.

"I'm on my way to your house, asshole," says the girl named Kate. "There in five, unless this STUPID MOTHERFUCKER SITS THROUGH THIS FUCKING LIGHT JESUS FUCKING CRACKER OF CHRIST."

* * *

A blond and a brunette walk into a bar. The blond says, "I can't ever pay you back for all you've done for me."

The real joke is this: you went to war so he didn't have to, you killed people for trying to attack him, you smiled at the girl he loved even though it burned like the wicked queen dancing in her red-hot iron shoes, and he thinks he owes you. 

You would have burned the world down for him to make it anew. He doesn't owe you shit.

* * *

The girl named Kate bursts into the brownstone -- you disengaged the locks because fuck it if they were were coming after you they could fucking well try -- followed by the dog named Lucky.

She has a big black duffel bag full of guns and ammo, and a Kevlar vest and expensive combat boots that fit you perfectly. There's a helmet, too, and knives for throwing and for hand to hand.

She has a purple bodysuit and helmet, two quivers full of arrows, and a complicated bow with pulleys and high-tension line.

The dog named Lucky has a Kevlar vest and goggles, and also his teeth.

You think the three of you look pretty good.

* * *

This is what the two of you know: The man named Steve's tracker is still working, which is not as useful as you might think, since he carries it in his shoes. It's still in the same location as the man named Clint Barton's tracker, which is a good sign, says the girl named Kate. He has an internal tracker installed by the woman called Natasha Romanov, because she's tired of misplacing him. The man named Steve refuses to have trackers installed, even by the woman called Natasha Romanov. Anyway, the scar tissue his body builds around them is thick enough to interfere with their transmissions. 

They're holding him somewhere in the docks of Brooklyn. The girl named Kate pulls up Google Maps and enters the GPS co-ordinates. First the computer map loads, and you say, "Can you get a sattelite map instead?" 

She pulls it up.

"I know that area," you say. "Make it bigger."

She makes the pinchy-flicking movement to make the map expand, and you study it again. "That's an old warehouse," you say. 

She looks at you. The dog named Lucky lifts his head too. "How old?" she says. 

You take ten deep breaths in the way the man named Sam Wilson showed you, and the pounding of your heart dulls down to something you can almost ignore. You look down at your hands when you place them on the table where the computer and the tablets are. Your right hand is trembling. You must be unconsciously sending a signal to the left hand, because the plates are just barely lifting and resetting, like they're stuck in a diagnostic cycle. "Old enough," you say.

"You okay?" says the girl named Kate.

You give this question the thought it deserves. "No," you say finally. 

"We'll get them back," says the girl named Kate, and in her voice you hear the same anger that throbs through your fear. You have so little left as your own. 

* * *

A blond and a brunette walk into a bar. The blond says, "You know I'd do anything for you."

The brunette says, "That's what I'm afraid of."

* * *

The first obstacle is convincing the girl named Kate that there is no way in hell, in this world or the next, that the two of you, the dog named Lucky, and all of your gear is going to fit in her tiny purple putt-putt car. Also, even though you don't say this out loud, a good hit from a medium sized slingshot could take it out, and you aren't going to Bed-Stuy. 

Truthfully, though, in the back of your head, where your very early memories live, you are cringing and imagining what the man named Steve would say if you rescued him in a tiny purple putt-putt car with license plates that say K4713. 

The man named Steve has a car that he never uses. You know it's in the garage but the garage is underground and you don't do well with underground as a rule, so you're just barely aware that it's there. When you go down there you realize it's a big black fuck-off muscle car that the man named Steve had approximately zero involvement in picking out. Maybe the car company sent it and the woman called Natasha Romanov made him keep it. More likely the man named Tony Stark gave it to him carelessly, like he was doing a favor by taking it, like the brownstone and the security system and your safe room. 

He could have bought it, but you don't think so. For one thing, the man named Steve is a New Yorker down to his bones, and as far as he's concerned cars are something that happen to other people. 

You don't let the girl named Kate drive. She revenges herself by going through the glove compartment and commenting on the fake IDs inside. Apparently the car is registered to a man named Jeff and his husband Taft. "I think there's vacation pictures," she says, twisting around to pull out a pharmacy bag. "Oh my god, it's one of those picture books. It's a honeymoon picture book." She flips through it while you turn down an alley at full speed. "Oh my god, look, you guys are doing a selfie kiss."

You glance over. The picture is of you and the man named Steve. Your face is smushed up against his cheek. He's laughing. It's very convincing. You recognize the pose, in fact. "It's from the movie," you say. "The one you made me watch."

"Ohhh," says the girl named Kate. "With the guys that played you guys in the biopic!" She squints. "I don't think that background was in the movie, though." 

You roll your eyes and shift into a knife-thin break in the traffic. "Computers," you say.

"I wonder if Romanov or Coulson did it," says the girl named Kate.

You genuinely don't know what would be worse. 

You don't have time to think about it, because you realize that if you go over the median and through the traffic on the other side you can enter that alley and cut off a precious mile from your route. You pull the wheel over violently -- the car responds like a dream, you're going to be sad when it gets blown up by some asshole -- and accelerate. The girl named Kate swears and the dog named Lucky braces himself without a whimper. Knowing the man named Clint Barton and the girl named Kate, he's probably endured worse. Especially from the man named Clint Barton, who in your professional opinion drives like the getaway driver for a clown car. 

You pull up a few blocks away from the place that the tracker is pinging from. You don't bother to lock the doors when you get out. Firstly, if they want the damn car they can have it, and secondly, Kate is already getting annoying texts about where you are and what the fuck do you think you're doing, and if the car gets jacked, it will confuse the trackers a little. 

You toss the keys on the seat and tip an imaginary hat to the shadows. As the three of you walk away, you can hear the beginnings of a scuffle. 

"Isn't he going to mind?" says the girl named Kate.

"Mind what?" you say. You're to the block of the warehouse now, taking point while the girl named Kate slides her StarkTech nanocomputer out of her pocket and gets the program ready to go as you move swiftly and silently toward the entrance.

"You just left Captain America's muscle car to be boosted by gang members," she hisses at you. "Isn't he going to be, well, _disappointed_ in you?"

You think about this while she brings the scanner up to the electronic lock on the warehouse and it begins to scan number combinations. 

"I took the tracker out of my arm, I crushed my phone so Stark's robot couldn't track me or yell at me, I'm coming to rescue him instead of staying safe, I'm carrying four guns, six knives, and a garotte even though I'm not really supposed to have anything sharper than a butter knife, and my team for this harebrained rescue effort is a one-eyed dog and an infant with a bow," you say. "Believe me, the car won't even be on the list of shit he's disappointed about."

"I guess you'd know," she says doubtfully. The scanner beeps, and the lock's light flickers green. "Okay," she says, "Fifteen minutes before we get Avengered. Twenty tops. Probably ten."

"Let's make the best of it, then," you say. You go in first, pistol in one hand, knife in the other. The dog named Lucky slides in low beside you, and the girl named Kate fires three arrows in rapid succession. She takes out three guys and enough of the lights to disorient the rest while you sink your knife into the shoulder of one guy and kneecap another with a single bullet. The dog named Lucky sinks his teeth deep into the hamstring of another one and lets go when the girl named Kate stabs the guy with an arrow. 

The dog named Lucky is sniffing around, and whines by one of the walls. You see there's a hand scanner, so you pick up the guy with slightly better equipment and drag him over. "There's a code, too," says the girl named Kate.

Well, that's easy. "Tell me the code if you want to keep your hand," you tell the guy as you slap his hand against the scanner. He looks you in the eyes for three seconds and then babbles out the code, which the girl named Kate enters. You knock him over the head and let him drop.

"Really?" says the girl named Kate. 

"Really what?" you say. 

You duck and turn and guard against a woman in a cheap knockoff of the woman called Natasha Romanov's catsuit. Her knife clangs against your metal arm and screeches down without making a mark. 

"Would you really have ripped off that guy's hand?" she says. She stabs the woman in the shoulder with an arrow and you toss her aside. "Where would you have put it? What would you have done with it? Were you gonna go up to _Captain America_ and say 'Hey Stevie, I heard you needed a hand'?"

Well, you hadn't planned to, but now you sort of want to. You still know when to keep your mouth shut around a girl, though. You shrug instead and catch an idiot in a chokehold with your metal arm.

"Where are the prisoners?" you demand.

"Or what, you gonna kill me?" says the man.

"Or I'm going to hurt you," you say. 

His eyes flick from you to Kate and the dog. "I don't know nothing."

The girl named Kate nocks an arrow and points it at his groin. Her face is set in hard lines. "Tell us where the fucking prisoners are."

"Jesus!" says the man, trying to cringe away from Kate. "Jesus fucking Christ, okay, okay! They're in the basement. The lab." 

Something goes cold in your chest, and you squeeze the man until he chokes and goes limp. 

"Okay," says Kate. "This looks bad."

You don't trust yourself to answer. You reload the magazine on your gun and head for the stairs. Kate follows you. "What do you think --" she begins. She sounds very young suddenly.

You say, "There's a lot of money in it if you find a successful copy of the super-soldier serum." You kick the door open and go in. "There's only one place you're sure to find one." 

"Two," she says. "Technically, right?"

"James Barnes wasn't a success," you tell her. 

"You're alive, aren't you?" says the girl named Kate. "You don't turn into a giant green rage monster. I could see them taking you and him. But why Clint? Granted, he's an annoying asshole and they probably took him to shut him up, but --"

"Control group," you say. "That's what he's known for, isn't it? He's the ordinary Avenger. Why waste one of your own group if it doesn't work?"

"But if it does work, you've got two super soldiers and they're both pissed at you," she points out. You jump off the stair railing and land on the floor below, an easy distance of twenty feet. "Dammit, asshole, wait up!"

"Not something to worry about if you've got another chair," you say, and kick in the door. You fire once, twice, three times, and take out four people because the fourth is crushed under two and three's weight. Another one screams like a stuck pig when Kate shoots him in the shoulder.

" _Honestly,_ " she says. "Henchmen these days."

"You're a henchman," you say.

"Your mom's a henchman," she says. " _You're_ a sidekick."

"Hey now, missy," you say.

There's really no time to argue about how wrong she is. You kick in one final door and surprise a team of muscle and science all scuttling around like so many cockroaches around Steve Rogers and the man named Clint Barton. They turn around.

The three of you -- Kate, Lucky, and you -- all bare your teeth and growl. One of the scientists drops his clipboard from nerveless hands.

Steve's on a gurney, like you were, with IVs and drips hooked up to him. Your vision whites out. You want these people to die. You need to get to Steve. There's a buzzing in your ears and all you can see is the people between you and him and the restraints holding him down -- head, hands, torso, and feet. You can't hear your gun firing. You barely register the kickback as you fire again and again. You're vaguely aware of Kate beside you, firing in the corners of the room where it's too dangerous to shoot a bullet. 

You're out of bullets. You flip the gun around and use it as a bludgeon instead, which is viscerally satisfying in a way that reminds you of lying on a mountain side and picking off enemy soldiers, of stomping into an alley and punching some asshole in the face. The last guy looks like Rumlow, if Rumlow had scars everywhere. He tries to say a trigger phrase to the Winter Soldier but it gurgles around the arrow Kate puts in his throat. 

You grab his gun and keep shooting until nothing is moving except you, Kate and the dog.

"Jesus," croaks Clint Barton from where he's also tied to a gurney. His face is black and blue, and so are his hands. "Jesus fucking Christ, Katie-Kate."

"You stupid asshole," shouts the girl named Kate, hands flying like angry hornets. "You - STUPID - FUCKING - ASSHOLE!"

She seems to have that clusterfuck well under control, so you ignore her and the dog named Lucky fussing over Clint Barton and go to Steve. His eyes flutter open as you take out the IVs. His face is pale and his eyes are glazed with drugs and pain. You press gauze pads gently to the IV sites and he looks at you like he can't quite believe you're there.

"Had him on the ropes," sighs Steve. He's still bleeding and his breathing sounds funny like broken ribs, but he's squinting up at you, two bright blue eyes barely visible through the beaten pulp of his face, and trying to smile.

You press a rough kiss to one of the few undamaged areas of his head, by his temple. "Sure you did, Stevie," you say. Your voice doesn't sound right. You keep your head bent close to his as the girl named Kate goes upstairs to meet the others piling down the stairs to bring you back to the sunshine of the surface above,

* * *

Captain America and Hawkeye are lying side by side in matching hospital beds. Hawkeye is in traction, and Captain America has IVs stuck in both arms and a nose tube slowly dripping nutrient slurry into his stomach. 

You, the girl named Kate, and the dog named Lucky are sitting in the room with them. The dog named Lucky is actually lying on his side asleep. He is chasing squirrels in his dreams. The girl named Kate is methodically painting Hawkeye's exposed toes a sparkly lavender. You alternate between sharpening your new knives that everybody is too scared to take away from you, and watching Captain America stealthily attempt to take his IVs out. You let him get so far as touching his arm before you throw a spit wad at him.

Captain America shakes the spit wad off, and pouts. 

Kate puts the cap back on the polish, puts the polish in her purse, and stands up. "Come on, asshole," she says, "let's ditch these losers and go get pizza."

"Pizza," moans Captain America. He's very hungry but the doctors won't let him have any real food until at least tomorrow. You don't feel sorry for him.

You stand up and stretch out tall. "No pineapple, Bishop," you say. "That shit's disgusting."

"Please, Bucky, I'm begging you, just one piece of pizza," says Captain America piteously.

"Whatever, Barnes, pineapple on pizza is the pinnacle of modern civilization," says the girl named Kate. 

Your name is Bucky Barnes, and you go out with Kate Bishop and eat pizza while Lucky stays behind to growl at Steve Rogers when he tries to take out his IV again.

* * *

You remember something when you're eating your pizza -- without any fucking pineapple, thanks anyway, Bishop. "Hey. What happens when a blond makes breakfast?"

"They need a brunette to save their bacon," says Kate. " _Duh_."

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> annnd shit you guys i don't think I've ever whined so much or so comprehensively about a story I've written ever .... maybe Feelings Are Boring came close, but that had a sex scene and I am famously horrible at the process of writing them. But this was a hard story to write. In fact I think I wrote close to 15000 words _avoiding this one_ , so ... good job team Meg???
> 
> THANK YOU FOR THE GORGEOUS PICTURE [Zephre~](http://archiveofourown.org/users/zephrene/pseuds/Zephre) ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I'm sorry I just stared at you blankly and said "whatever you think is best, I guess?" when you asked me what I wanted.
> 
> I did a fair amount of research on PTSD but mostly I ran things through Verity, who was an invaluable help when I popped up at like, one am her time like OKAY WOULD THIS MAKE ME A DICK IF BUCKY -- all the time, and betaed it a least twice, not to mention listened to me gripe on IM as I wrestled with action scenes and Bucky's feelings. Amanda did a complete edit that _massively_ improved the entire story. And many, many lots people including coinin, @moggiesandtea, Regonym and people whose names I am forgetting because of this cold helped me enormously. THANK YOU BAES.
> 
> I did a fair amount of research on PTSD and combat veterans. I went through a lot of books. Some of them were terrible. Like "women are biologically primed to react to violence passively" terrible. If that one hadn't been a library book I would have cheerfully lit it on fire with my mind. Anyway, disclaimers: I am not an expert, your mileage may vary, please don't do the thing where Bucky powers through a trigger. Please. 
> 
> HOPE YOU ENJOYED IT, STAY SAFE, DRINK A GLASS OF WATER, AND TAKE OF URSELVES. UR BEAUTIFUL ALL OF YOU ♥♥♥♥ See you next time!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [ART: To the Rescue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2495210) by [Zephre (zephrene)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zephrene/pseuds/Zephre)
  * [[Podfic] Re: Blonde Joke](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5004967) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)




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